Cameroon’s mills can roll more than the market needs but cannot source enough iron

5.1 Structure: re-rollers, small melt shops and two industry groups

The industry is concentrated in and around Douala, close to the port through which billets arrive. Its members are organised in two associations. One, Ocitram, brings together Aciéries du Cameroun, Metafrique Steel, Prometal, and the aluminium companies Proalu and Alucam; it reports about 5,000 jobs, about 500 bn FCFA of turnover and a market share of about 95% for its members, figures that include aluminium [S03]. A second association groups other producers [S110].

Table 5.1 sourcedPrincipal steel producers in Cameroon, as publicly reported

Source: as listed. Capacities are as reported by the companies or the press and use different definitions; they should not be added together. n.a.: none reported in the sources consulted.

Prometal is by some distance the largest operator. Its two newest plants, inaugurated in January 2024, represented an investment of 57 bn FCFA and about 1,000 direct jobs for about 360 kt a year of products [S117]. Its rolling mill, supplied by SMS group, produces wire rod, beams, angles, flats and reinforcing bar [S117][S118]. In April 2023 the national daily described its electric arc furnace, with about 200 kt a year of reinforcing-bar capacity, as the first of its kind in Central Africa [S120]. Electricity bills illustrate the relative scale of the mills: in 2024 Prometal paid 8.37 bn FCFA for power, Metafrique Steel 3.81 bn FCFA, Acero Metal 3.11 bn FCFA and Aciéries du Cameroun 1.61 bn FCFA [S122]. Prometal’s bill was 3.90 bn FCFA in 2021 [S122].

5.2 Capacity has grown much faster than the market

Reported reinforcing-bar capacity has risen quickly. When the Director General of Customs reaffirmed the rebar import ban in April 2023, the note cited local capacity of 260 kt against demand of 180 kt [S56]. In June 2023 industry sources cited installed capacity of 450 kt, production of about 260 kt in 2022 and demand of about 180 kt [S80]. In May 2026 Ocitram reported reinforcing-bar capacity of 627 kt against demand of 180 kt; the source prints "627 tonnes", which is read here as thousand tonnes in line with the other figures [S03].

Source: Customs note of 3 April 2023 as reported by EcoMatin [S56]; EcoMatin, June 2023 [S80]; Cameroon Tribune, 11 May 2026 [S03]. Definitions differ by source.

The same pattern holds for other rolled products. Ocitram’s May 2026 figures show capacity of 72 kt for wire rod and nails against demand of 36 kt, 43 kt for roofing sheet against 21 kt, 34 kt for tubes against 14 kt and 2.8 kt for annealed wire against 1.8 kt [S03]. In every product line the industry reports capacity of roughly two to three and a half times domestic demand.

Across all products, industry and press sources in September and October 2026 put installed steel transformation capacity at about 1.2 Mt a year, with plants running at about 50%, and reported more than 30 bn FCFA of unsold stock [S20][S01][S116]. These figures are not fully consistent with each other, and they combine different products and definitions, but they all describe the same situation: a domestic market that cannot absorb the output of the rolling capacity already built.

5.3 Feedstock: 40% local scrap, 60% imported billets

A re-rolling mill needs billets. It can buy them, or it can make them by melting scrap or other iron units in an electric arc furnace or induction furnace and casting the liquid steel. Cameroon’s mills do both. Industry sources state that local scrap covers about 40% of the mills’ needs and imported billets about 60%, and that scrap purchase prices have risen by about 30% [S03][S01][S116].

These shares can be combined with the trade data to estimate the industry’s iron-unit balance. If the 161.4 kt of billets imported in 2023 represented about 60% of the mills’ iron units, the total was about 269 kt, of which about 108 kt came from local scrap (derived) [S05][S20]. The total is consistent with reported domestic production of about 260 kt in 2022 [S80], allowing for melting and rolling losses.

Source: derived from UN Comtrade billet imports for 2023 [S05] and the 40/60 split reported by industry [S03][S20][S01]; scrap arising from Bidoung et al. (2007), data for 2006 [S27].

The evidence on scrap is thin and dated. The only quantified study, by researchers at the national polytechnic school and the local materials promotion agency, estimated domestic ferrous scrap arising at 53,000 to 61,833 t a year in 2006, collected 53% by recyclers, 29% by informal dismantlers and 15% by exporters [S27]. Arisings have certainly grown since then with the country’s steel stock, but no recent estimate exists. Recorded scrap exports fell from 3,675 t in 2019 to near zero from 2020 [S05]; this is consistent with an informal restriction, but no legal text banning scrap exports was found, and the April 2022 export suspension covered food products and cement only [S123]. Rising scrap prices suggest that the mills are already competing for a limited resource [S01][S116].

5.4 The financing of billet imports

On 28 September 2026, in Cairo, the Prometal group signed a revolving facility of €40m (26.2 bn FCFA) with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to finance imports of steel billets, according to press reports in Cameroon [S20][S21][S01]. Reports linked the facility to the group’s production plans and to growing scarcity of domestic scrap [S116]. The facility is a normal commercial arrangement for a re-roller and is cited here only for what it shows about the market: the country’s largest producer has chosen to secure imported billets, rather than domestic iron, to keep its mills supplied. In a market where local mills run at about half their capacity, the availability and cost of billets, not the rolling capacity, determine output.

5.5 Protection and regulation

The industry operates under three layers of protection and regulation.

The first is the suspension of reinforcing-bar imports. A letter from the Prime Minister’s office dated 31 May 2016 suspended rebar imports until further notice [S04]. The Director General of Customs reaffirmed in a note of 3 April 2023 that imports "remain prohibited until further notice", on the very high instruction of the President of the Republic conveyed in a letter of 13 March 2023 [S56]. No document lifting the suspension was found [S26]. Enforcement has been tested: in December 2020 customs sealed more than 7,300 t of rebar imported for the Kribi port works [S04].

The second is the mandatory standard. Reinforcing bar must comply with standard NC 236/2024/06, under ministerial orders of 20 April 2022 that made a set of construction standards mandatory [S26][S110]. The Fe450 grade is not in the standard’s catalogue; ANOR, the standards agency, sanctioned a producer in October 2024 over Fe450 bars, and a request by one group of producers on 28 November 2025 to revise the standard was refused by the Prime Minister’s office on 19 January 2026, which considered a revision inappropriate in the current context of a fast-growing sector [S26][S110]. Consumer complaints about the quality of locally made bars were reported in April 2023 and producers have denounced counterfeit bars on the market [S111][S80].

The third is price regulation. The Ministry of Commerce homologates producer prices for reinforcing bar, per bar, by diameter and grade. In October 2023 producers accepted reductions, for example from 6,900 to 6,750 FCFA for a 12 mm FE500 bar [S24]. Chapter 8 analyses these prices. A new environmental tax of 5,000 FCFA per tonne on reinforcing bar, payable by local producers and importers alike, applies from 1 January 2026 [S124].

5.6 Energy, safety and quality

Steel mills are among the largest electricity consumers in Cameroon. Prometal’s load is about 40 MW, expected to reach about 90 MW once its aluminium affiliate Proalu runs, and the group has moved to a high-voltage supply through an access contract with the transmission company SONATREL and a dedicated 50 MVA transformer [S122][S93]. In October 2026 about 150 MW of industrial demand remained unmet pending completion of the Nachtigal evacuation line [S92]. Power cost and availability are therefore part of the feedstock problem: an electric arc furnace that melts scrap or direct-reduced iron needs about 450 kWh per tonne of liquid steel on the planning value used in this series (347 to 500 kWh in the IFC guidelines, 404 to 748 kWh in European plants), while a re-rolling mill that buys billets needs only reheating and rolling energy [S125][S126][S127]. White paper 05, Chapters 2 and 3, analyses the power system and the prices available to large users.

Fires and explosions are a recognised melt-shop hazard. Together with the disputes over grades and the reports of counterfeit bars, they show that safety and quality systems have to keep pace with a sector whose capacity has grown quickly. Certified quality, traceability and safety are not only regulatory requirements; in a market with surplus rolling capacity they are the main ways for a producer to differentiate.

5.7 Employment and economic weight

The steel and metals industry is a significant employer in Douala. Ocitram reports about 5,000 jobs and about 500 bn FCFA of turnover for its members, including the aluminium companies [S03]. Prometal alone reported about 1,000 direct jobs for its two newest plants [S117]. These figures can be compared with international benchmarks of direct employment per million tonnes of capacity, which vary widely with the process: about 500 jobs per Mt in highly automated United States scrap-based micro-mills, about 2,800 for Prometal’s plants and about 5,000 at Devki’s ore-based plant in Kenya (derived) [S128][S117][S63].

The indirect effects are larger than the direct ones. worldsteel estimates that for every two jobs in the steel sector, thirteen more are supported in its supply chain [S129]. In the European Union, the industry’s employment multipliers are 6.2 including supply-chain effects and 8.6 including induced spending [S130]. Such multipliers are upper bounds for Cameroon, where supply chains are thinner and many inputs are imported, but they indicate why steel features among the priority sub-sectors of the national development strategy [S25].

The same comparison explains why the type of capacity matters. A re-rolling mill employs people in reheating, rolling, finishing and maintenance. A melt shop adds furnace, casting, refractory and laboratory work. Ore-based iron-making adds still more, in raw-material handling, reduction and utilities. Moving upstream, from rolling to melting and eventually to iron-making, increases the domestic value added and employment attached to each tonne of steel used in Cameroon, as well as reducing the import bill.

5.8 Diagnosis

The domestic industry has three strengths: a large installed base of rolling capacity, experienced operators, and protection at the finished-bar stage. It has four weaknesses: dependence on imported billets from a narrow set of origins, limited and costly domestic scrap, high exposure to electricity availability, and a market too small to absorb the capacity already built. The result is low utilisation and price pressure inside a protected market.

For a new producer, the diagnosis points away from adding another rolling mill for reinforcing bar and towards the bottleneck: iron units, and the products the existing mills cannot make. A merchant supply of billets from a domestic melt shop, priced competitively against imports, would serve mills that already exist. Heavy sections and other products that are imported today would serve customers that domestic mills cannot. Chapter 9 develops these options.